Monthly Archives: October 2016

Seasons change ahead of time for us stock photographers. Ad campaigns are planned and images chosen ahead of time and I need to switch gears to stay ahead of the curve. Fortunately, with my lens broken and weeks of downtime to look forward to I have a wealth of imagery from last winter to draw upon. I imagine I could last all winter without a camera and no one would even notice.

In the winter months even the sun, with enough power to set afire the entire solar system from 93 million miles away, is not able penetrate the massive monolith to our southwest. Pikes Peak and much of the valley below will not see sunshine until the vernal equinox. At its lowest point, the sun will be setting at 3:30, and I can’t say I’m ready to face the bleakness of the cold, darkness and snow just yet. Each year I hope that I will make it out of this tiny abode before the snow flies and once again I must resign myself to the fact that once again I did not. I will steel my spirit and remaining sanity for the new season with nothing between me and the cold but a poorly insulated piece of tin.

To add to the melancholy mood, next week I will take my co-worker to the airport to begin a new life with a new job. I’ll miss terribly her laugh and her spunk. Seems every time I get used to someone being around, they have to leave 😦

This winter will be a bit different however, with a job I won’t have quite so many hours to while away alone at my keyboard and I won’t have to worry about whether I will have enough propane for the furnace. However I face the impossible situation of a landlord who will not allow me to leave my dogs at home without me and have no idea how I am going to be able to have them in my truck camper topper when it is too cold. I’m working on buying some property, so … still hoping for a miracle before it gets too cold. God will provide a solution, He always does.

But for now, these snowy images are not going upload themselves, so I’d better get to it and get them ready for sale! On the upside… I am experiencing a sudden substantial increase in sales with some real interest in my portfolio in Germany!

Summer is over and the crisp temperatures of fall are settling in all over the high country. I have uploaded a few of my best autumn color pictures to Alamy and Pixels.com but I have to face the fact. My style of imagery sells best on iStock. Despite it’s shortcomings and small commission rates, the bulk of my income comes from there. There isn’t really any other place where I can reliably place my sports editorial images and with my years of experience there, I have my rejection rate down to zero.

So this morning I am finding myself looking over the summer’s images and noticing how many good ones I have yet to upload. Our Mount Massive summit hike is the shoot I am looking at right now. Wow… what a day that was, beautiful weather, good friends, a rugged hike and some of the most magnificent scenery and wildlife I have ever seen were the experience of that day.

Will also never forget the cute lady with the little Pomeranian doggy that was hiking with her. We first saw her coming up behind us and were determined that she was not going to pass us… but youth won out and she eventually caught up with us, so not wanting to let an opportunity for a photo op pass, I wondered if she would stop and pose for a picture. She graciously did and now I have the memory cast in pixels 🙂

We didn’t see any wildlife on the way up and I was a bit disappointed about that, but on the way down we were graced by the presence of a small herd of mountain goats, including this cute baby. This of course was well worth the time taking a break in our hike to capture. I uploaded a small number of the very best ones to my Alamy port, but there are dozens more images from this day that belong on iStock, and that’s the plain truth of it.

The new policy of no deletions without permission on iStock bothers me a little bit, but if I think about it… I never delete any anyway. I just put them up there for sale and forget about them. Money is short these days and there doesn’t seem to be much under my control that I can do, but I can surely upload these assets to iStock where I know the inspectors will put them up for sale. It’s what I’ve always done and now is not the time to falter 🙂